Reasons why you shouldn't be friends/in contact with your ex! (add your own)

[twitchyfingers]

llama, keepin' it real as ever!

• when (not IF) your ex gets a new significant other, there is a very good chance they will drop you like a hot potato. DOUBLE OUCH.
  
• you don't want to burden your REAL friends with all your ongoing angst and over-analysis of every. freaking. thing your ex says or does -- your poor friends have been through enough, trying to help you through the breakup.

[dramallama]

thanks twitchyfingers.

- focusing on your ex takes away from YOUR life - any joy is overcrowded by thoughts of them and your anguish over the situation you've found yourself in. But if you stick with NC, those thoughts/feeling will slowly go away and you will be yourself again. But it takes time...

[twitchyfingers]

• eliminates the very real possibility that, at some point, in a moment of weakness, you will freak out and do something you later regret (beg, grovel, break crockery). This freak-out diminishes your sense of self-worth, AND gives the ex more reason to think "Huh, see? You're whacked. I'm glad I broke it off!"

[twitchyfingers]

• staying friends makes the breakup easier for them, and harder for you.

That's just another way of saying some of what llama has said in her posts, but I like it because it really hammers the point home.

[dramallama]

Yeah, it lets your ex wean themselves off you, while you are giving them a constant ego boost, which usually lets them move onto the next person quicker. Meanwhile you are left on the sidelines in the dust (which is what you've chosen to do, so it isn't entirely your ex's fault...)

[mad rabbits]

So you don't have a meltdown when you find out they have a girlfriend over facebook, drink a bottle of wine and have a smoking relapse, leaving you incapable of going to work the next day (this just happened to me).

At least I have a sense of humour about it.

[twitchyfingers]

Augh, damn facebook! That deserves a bullet-point of its own, for sure. If you're not trying to be BFFs with them, you can defriend more easily.

Drink lots of water, badhabits.

[ChicoShadow]

For me, talking to my ex helped me deal with the breakup. For months after we first split, it was all I could think about so I made him talk to me (not in person though) and we discussed why it was that we actually broke up. It helped so much. I was able to stop obsessing over it and being angry and confused. Now we're back to being friends like we were before we started dating. I guess this wouldn't work for everyone if you and your ex were not friendly and the relationship ended really ugly.

[mad rabbits]

Luckily I haven't been speaking to him, but I should have deleted him off fb ages ago! grrr Randomly decided to take a peek last night and he has put me on LIMITED PROFILE and has a girlfriend.

I deleted him straight away... it was hard, I'll never see him again (which is a good thing). But kind of shocking anyway.

[Dryyoureyes]

-staying friends might justify unfair behaviour like cheating for an ex! It´s pretty much an egopush for them and a relief of their guilty conscience. It also makes you look weak because you are cool with such behaviour. If you still want to be friends....now the ex knows by the latest that he/she can do anything with you.